From the Ice

Fortunately the very strong winds that we had yesterday eased during the night to a more moderate 30 knots and that was enough to allow us to start the GPR survey of the route ahead. This is a badly crevassed area but thankfully many of the bridges that we built on our southbound journey we found were still intact. By lunchtime we had surveyed up and over the hill and  identified a few mor…

The weather for the last few days has been the best we have had for many, many months and that has helped us make good progress. The ground penetrating radar has been busy as we check the route ahead and several sections have required a twisting route as we pick our way through crevassed areas. Moving the loads through is a slow process and much of it is done on the winch cable – move the Cat…

by Brian Newham…

Every morning and every night Ice Team leader Brian Newham braves the outside – no matter what the weather is throwing at him – to take meteorological observations as part of our very many scientific projects during the expedition. These then get sent back to the Met Office in the UK for analysis and archiving. Today, we can share the bulk of Brian’s findings with these four graphs charting t…

Today was a productive day. Overnight the wind eased slightly, although it was still over 40 knots, but more importantly there was less drifting snow in the air so visibility improved to a hundred meters or more. Added to that was an almost cloudless sky so surface contrast was good. It was time to move camp. After several hours of final snow clearance and a few tweaks on the skis to break t…

Six fuel scoots were moved 5.4km yesterday, and a further six were moved to the same location today.  Deteriorating conditions made it prudent to then call a halt and the cabooses were not moved. We now have just two loads left to move. We also carried out our weather observations for the Met Office as normal, as well as snow sampling, minor Cat maintenance and day one of a five day White Mars…

It’s hard to believe that it’s six months since winter began and we left the coast at Crown Bay, but the arrival of the equinox today, 22nd September, leaves us with no doubt. The event actually occurs at 20.44 GMT and at that moment, as the earth moves in its orbit around the sun, it reaches the point at which, due to the tilted axis of the earth, the sun crosses the equator. It marks t…

Today’s activities: Met obs + GPS trial continues. Snow sampling. Despite several brief partial clearances conditions remain poor with visibility down to less than 10 meters for most of the day. Cats kept running round the clock with 2hrly checks. General caboose maintenance. All OK. Intentions for tomorrow: Normal obs. Domestic scrubout. Conditions permitting we will start moving fuel scoots…

We might be ready to move but the weather has other ideas! With the temperature up to -28℃ for the first time in ages we are all feeling the heat but with the mild air has come cloud and snow as well as the ever-present wind. Visibility has been less than 50 meters all day and at times considerably less than that so it’s just not been sensible to think of moving. The day has not been lost…

Well, its time has come. After 100 or so days of being parked up and not turning a cog at -55C and  with winds gusting around it to chill it to the bone, Rover’s dig out time has come round. We all got stuck into clearing away the snow with shovels, ice axes, pry bars, welding rods and brushes.  Most of the morning (Monday) was consumed with removing the surrounding mounds of drift snow that…